The present invention relates to a performance apparatus which receives user's performance operation of a plurality of switches and executes a music performance in accordance with the performance operation, and a tone generation method and computer program for the performance apparatus.
Application called “TENORI-ON” has been know from, for example, 1) “Keitai News”, [online], Jan. 16, 2002, ascii, [searched on Apr. 1, 2004], Internet <URL: http://k-tai.ascii24.com/k-tai/news/2002/01/16/632762-000. html?geta>, and 2) “World of Digista Curator”, [online], Digital Stadium, Toshio Iwai, Exhibit=TENORI-ON, [searched on Apr. 1, 2004], Internet <URL: http://www.nhk.or.jp/digiata/lab/digista ten/curator.html>. In performance apparatus, such as portable telephones and game apparatus, executing the application “TENORI-ON”, point-designating inputs entered by a user are received via a 16×16 grid arranged on a matrix in such a manner that the horizontal axis represents the timing and the vertical axis represents the tone pitch. Each of such performance apparatus sequentially generates, at predetermined timing, tone pitches corresponding to user-designated points from a leftmost row onward. In this way, the user can use the performance apparatus to compose and perform simple music pieces with high ingenuity.
The conventionally-known performance apparatus, which include a tone generator (e.g., MIDI tone generator), cause the tone generator to generate tones, using information indicative of tone colors of performance tones and tone pitches to be allocated to individual designating points on the grid, to thereby generate a tone pitch corresponding to each user-designated point with a predetermined tone color.
Therefore, the conventionally-known performance apparatus can only perform with tone colors of a predetermined pattern. Further, because given tone pitches are allocated to the designating points, the conventionally-known performance apparatus would unavoidably present performance limitations in terms of diversity of performance tones.